1. Field of the Invention
The invention is generally directed to computerized networks. It is more specifically directed to a system for navigating through a network and accessing desired network services.
2a. Reservation of Rights Beyond This Utility Patent
This document shows examples of graphical user interface (GUI) art and/or various Trademarks and/or screen ornamentations.
The original assignee of the present utility patent application claims certain copyrights, trademark rights, tradedress rights, and so forth in said GUI examples. The assignee has no objection, however, to the reproduction by others of these items if such reproduction is for the sole purpose of studying the items to understand the invention. The assignee reserves all other copyrights, trademark rights, and other such rights in the disclosed GUI examples including the right to reproduce the GUI items on a computer monitor in machine-executable form. (Mention herein of trademarks belonging to others is not intended to indicate that the assignee wishes to claim or otherwise affect the marks of others. )
2c. Cross Reference to Related Patents
The following U.S. patent(s) is/are assigned to the assignee of the present application, is/are related to the present application and its/their disclosures is/are incorporated herein by reference:
(A) Reissue U.S. Pat. No. 32,632 reissued Mar. 29, 1988 to Atkinson, and entitled, DISPLAY SYSTEM; PA1 (B) U.S. Pat. No. 5,202,828 issued Apr. 13, 1993 to Vertelney et al, and entitled, USER INTERFACE SYSTEM HAVING PROGRAMMABLE USER INTERFACE ELEMENTS; and PA1 (C) U.S. Pat. No. 5,196,838 issued Mar. 23, 1993 to Meier et al, and entitled, INTELLIGENT SCROLLING.
3. Description of the Related Art
Computer networks offer users a wide variety of services, including but not limited to; access to numerous computer data files stored on one or more file servers, interaction with workgroup coordinating systems (e.g. meeting schedulers), access to specially-licensed software (e.g. which access is controlled by a license-key server), and use of various input/output devices such as image scanners and laser printers.
Growth-minded organizations habitually expand their networks by adding new categories of services to the networks as time goes on and by adding more capacity to each service category as demand grows.
A small company may start with a relatively small network that has attached to it only a handful of personal computers (PC's). The network may have a single laserprinter (LP) that is to be shared by the small number of PC's, and a single file server (FS) that is also to be shared by the PC's. As the company grows, it may become necessary to add more PC's to the network. At the same time it may become desirable to add more laser printers and more file servers to the network. It may become advisable to subdivide the network into zones and to assign one or more of the PC's, printers, or devices belonging to other service categories, each to a particular zone. The zones may be arranged according to physical or logical divisions of the company, such as for example, one zone for the accounting department, a second for engineering, and a third for marketing.
As the company grows even larger, it may become desirable to subdivide the network into more zones, providing perhaps multiple zones in each of the accounting, engineering and marketing departments. At the same time, it may become desirable to provide new categories of services on the network, such as conference-scheduling (which is controlled for example by a Meeting Maker.TM. {trademark attributed to ON Technology}) and license control (which is controlled for example by a Keyserver.TM. {trademark attributed to Sassafras Software}). Devices within these latter categories may also be assigned to different corporate departments or subdepartments.
In addition, it may become desirable to add non-networked, personal devices to the personal computer or workstation of certain individuals. A mail-room clerk for example, might have a special-purpose label-making device added to his or her workstation while an executive in an accounting department might have a check-writing device added to his or her workstation. These personal devices are often intended for restricted-use and are not intended to be accessible to other network users.
The above example of company growth shows how a network can expand in size and mutate in structure to offer users not only a correspondingly wider choice of devices and services, but also an ever changing route along which they must navigate to get to an available service or device. This leaves users with the problem of comprehending the scope of choices available to them, of expeditiously making choices that meet their immediate needs and of later recalling what choices they made and/or how they got there.
Each personal computer or workstation on a network (the terms PC and workstation are used interchangeably here) will typically have some mechanism installed on it for informing its user about the number and/or nature of resources available on an attached network and about the number and/or nature of non-networked resources that are otherwise available for use through the PC/workstation. Such a mechanism is referred to here as an "Availability Presentation Interface" or AVPI for short.
When a user wishes to print a document, he or she usually wants it to print on only one printing device rather than having it print out on every printing device that is on or off the network. Accordingly, each PC/-workstation typically has some mechanism installed on it for letting its user make a selective, logical connection to the specific device that is to be used, regardless of whether it is on a network or otherwise connected to the PC/workstation. Such a device-choosing mechanism is referred to here as a "Connection-Making Interface" (CMI).
Previous approaches to availability presentation and to connection-making followed a root-centric paradigm, in so far as devices on a network were concerned. The overall network was represented in terms of a root-centric topology where a real or hypothetical "root node" always served as a reference starting point. The user had to navigate along the network from the root node to a desired other node in order to inspect or connect with a networked device/service.
When a root-centric paradigm is used, the availability or nature of a device that is found at a visited node is displayed at the time of the visit and the user is presented with the option of making a logical connection to the device at the time of the visit. All availability presentation and connection-making activities consume noticeable amounts of time because the user's train of thought must direct itself to starting at the root node and then navigating along the network to the other nodes of the network.
The root-centric approach works well for persons who are working on a system-level job in which their thought pattern is constantly directed to network topology. Examples include persons working on network management or network re-design. But the same root-centric approach often fails to mesh neatly with the immediate thought patterns of network users who are performing jobs that do not have network topology as part of their main focus.
In other words, the root-centric paradigm is not "user-friendly" to users who are working on a task that is not root-centric. Consider for example, a case where a person working in a subdivision of the corporate accounting department wishes to query a database stored in a file-server of the accounting department and who further wishes to print out the results of the database query. This person is not interested in learning about the topological details of the network to which the file-server and printer are connected. Such root-centric details have little to do with his or her immediate job function. Yet in a root-centric system, this person is forced to keep informed of all network topology changes just so he or she can navigate from the root node to the desired file-server and printer for the purpose of choosing each device and using it to complete a thought-intensive project that has database inquiry rather than network mapping as its prime focus.
A need exists for a different kind of approach, where the availability presentation interface (AVPI) and connection-making interface (CMI) of each PC or workstation is tailored to meet the immediate needs of each individual user rather than being root-centric.